Nightingale-Conant - The Top 2 Percent: How to Become the Highest-Paid, Highest-Profile Person in Your Industry

Entrepreneur Press, Publisher

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ISBN 978-1-64201-111-1 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-61308-434-2 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

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I n 1956, Earl Nightingale wrote and recorded a message that he called The Strangest Secret. In a short period of time, without advertising or marketing, more than a million copies had been sold. In fact, The Strangest Secret earned a gold record. Its the only gold record ever achieved for the spoken word.

One of the people who heard The Strangest Secret was Lloyd Conant, the owner of a Chicago printing and direct-response company. Lloyd contacted Earl and the two became fast friends. Their common bond? Their shared values of success.

In 1960, Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conant formed the Nightingale-Conant corporation so they could share those values with the world. They started with the now-classic success program Lead the Field. Leadthe Field became a bestseller as well, touching the lives of more than a million people.

Since then, Nightingale-Conant has featured the wisdom and success principles of hundreds of individuals who are at the top of virtually every industry.

After 50 years of teaching success, Nightingale Learning Systems has gathered the common bonds and shared values of those individuals who occupy the rarest positions in their industriesthe top 2%.

Who better to create a strategy about becoming the highest-paid, highest-profile person in your industry than the company that was founded on those values and who has featured hundreds of authors who are in the top 2% of their fields? And who better to partner with to bring this timeless content to a new audience than Entrepreneur Press? For over 40 years, Entrepreneur has been the voice of authority on entrepreneurship and success. Now these two powerhouse brands team up to share their insight with you.

With The Top 2%, our intention is to follow in Nightingale-Conants founders footsteps and his classic Lead the Field program by providing the latest research on what it takes to reach the top in any industry. It is our hope that this book achieves the same legendary status and provides the road map for the next generation of achieversstarting with you.

Think about the most successful people you have read about. People like Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Shonda Rimes, Vera Wang, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Oprah Winfrey. Did their success happen because of random events? Is Warren Buffet the Oracle of Omaha because of luck? Is Oprahs success story a fluke? Are they just lucky people who happened to be at the right places at the right times?

No. Their success is based on far more than random events or luck. They have followed a pattern of attitudes and behaviors that directly led to their success. And this book will share stories of other people whove done the same thing.

Both Nightingale-Conant and Entrepreneur have had the honor and pleasure of working with some of the most successful people in just about every industry. Nightingale-Conant has featured authors from the fields of medicine and science, nutrition and health, wealth building and money management, sales and marketing, metaphysics and spirituality, public speaking and business skills, and many others. In addition, Nightingale-Conant has also created branded programs through Nightingale Learning Systems: The Power of Passive Income, The FlexBrain Method, The Richest Man in Babylon, and Focused Mind, Powerful Mind. Likewise, the team at Entrepreneur has written about, interviewed, and collaborated with the some of the most successful thought leaders and influencers in the small-business and entrepreneurship spaces, from Brian Tracy and Dan S. Kennedy to Gary Vaynerchuck and Daymond John.

You might be wondering, Why the 2%? Most leaders and success experts look only at the top 5%. Whats so special about the 2%?

The fact is, there is a dramatic difference in achievement and wellness between the people who are in the top 2% and those who are in the top 5%. According to The Wall Street Journal, over 5 million people moved from the top 5% in wealth to the top 1% in wealth in the last two decades. The incomes of the top earners in the U.S. are growing faster than the incomes of any other segment of the population.

Even when youre not talking about money, its still better to be in the top 2% than the top 5%. Wouldnt you rather be in the top 2% of healthy people? The top 2% of happy people? Have relationships that are better than 98% of everyone elses?

The days when being in the top 5% was good enough are gone. We live in a global village with, frankly, a bigger pool of talented, motivated people who are competing against each other. When you apply the ideas and techniques you learn in this book, youll be poised to be in the top 2% of any area you choose to succeed in. A core set of attitudes and behaviors are common among those who are the top 2% in every industry. Weve figured out the formula, and were going to share it with you.

You see, the fact is, the top 2% set the trends in every industry. They set the trends by imagining and dreaming things that didnt exist and then doing what it took to make it happen. Whether youre in business, entertainment, sports, politics, or some other industry, if youre in the top 2%, you have the power and influence to make things happen.

Before we get any further, lets talk about how this book is structured. The editors at Nightingale Learning Systems spent months researching through their library and identified 17 principles of success that were common among all their top authors. Regardless of whether youre listening to Anthony Robbins, Marc David, John Cummuta, or Zig Ziglar, these principles are common to all of them.

Next, they arranged the principles into a model that is represented by the shape of a star. Each of the points of the star represents one area of success. The letters in the word STARS stand for the qualities we identified. So, the S stands for Sense of Purpose. The T stands for Traits. The A is for Attitudes. The R stands for Rapport with Others. And the last S stands for